


Truman's Map

by dankuck



Category: The Truman Show (1998)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fear of Death, Minor Character Death, Murder, Murder Mystery, Mystery, Rationalist, Slavery, rationalfic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:02:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23705065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dankuck/pseuds/dankuck
Summary: Truman Burbank doesn't know he lives in a TV show. Can his father's secret book set him free?
Comments: 12
Kudos: 23





	1. The Discrete Conspiracy

_Based on characters owned by Scott Rudin Productions_

I did not expect to find the edge of the world when I set sail that morning. I just tacked out of the harbor toward wherever the Gulf of Mexico met the first light of dawn. The timing was right and my hiding spot would be useless in the daylight.

Before that day, I had already estimated that the world wasn’t exactly real. I didn’t expect anything quite so literally fake as what I found. Nothing so solid as this solid wall painted to look like the sky.

Now, I stood before a dark, open doorway at the edge of the world. I squinted, but the darkness didn’t resolve into anything. Just deeper darkness. I hesitated to step through, my thoughts a jumble of beliefs and memories, each one updating, updating.

I had sailed through a sudden, violent storm. I had reached the wall at the edge of the world and the door set into it.

Now I was talking to myself. “The edge of the world is a solid wall painted like the sky so as to fool distant observers”.

No, not observers. Just one observer. Just me. Why had I never picked up a telescope and pointed it at the horizon? Had I ever even seen a telescope?

My thoughts kept updating. My mind was the steady clatter of falling dominoes.

***

My dad started behaving strangely, in the weeks before he died, when I was ten. I’d be washing dishes, or sitting with my math book open – he’d always help me with my math, not because I needed it, but because he liked it – and I’d catch him staring, stars in his eyes, smiling. A bittersweet smile.

I’d say something like “Come to visit the Truman Zoo?” and make a pig nose or pull my ears out like a monkey. Each time he would laugh, apologize for staring, and tell me he loved me. Then the next day he’d get starry eyed again.

There were other strange incidents, but the strangest was the last.

On a trip to the grocery store, my dad parked in the back lot and led me into the loading dock. It was dark and still, unreal. I’d never seen it before. He said we didn’t have much time, that this was a spot without any cameras. I thought he meant security cameras, but since I was a contradictory brat I glanced around for a way to disagree. There actually was a camera in that backroom. A TV camera, dusty and unused.

He snapped his fingers at me, which was unusually sharp. “Sorry, but I need you to watch me now, Truman”. If I had a moment to monitor my thoughts, I’d have noticed how far out of place a TV camera is in the loading dock of a grocery store.

He wasted no time, but quickly swore me to do three things.

First, he had me promise to read the _Discrete Mathematics_ book he had on the bookshelf at home.

Second, I had to promise I would not mention the book to anyone ever, or even talk about it aloud to myself in private.

Lastly and most mysteriously, I promised to remember that the map is not the territory. It sounded like a code phrase.

Delivering this speech, he was at once very rehearsed and very sincere, like an actor breaking character to speak to me, the audience, but it was still something he memorized. After I repeated his words, he said, “Good, Truman. Now let’s go. Keep repeating that in your head. Don’t look at me strangely and keep your mouth shut. Don’t forget what I said.”

We passed on out of the store room to the brightly lit grocery store, and Dad made a big show as if we had come through the loading dock just to surprise his buddy Chuck. But I knew there was something special about that loading dock. Something that made it OK for him to tell me something that wasn’t OK anywhere else. Chuck didn’t look amused at first. He made a face at my dad that I didn’t understand. Then he laughed.

After that, Dad wasn’t strange anymore. He was back to his old self. All the time, whatever he was doing. Whether I was interrupting his work or he was reading me a bedtime story, he had that light in his eyes that told me he loved me. That I could trust that.

It was like that for the whole week until he died.

We went out on the sloop that day, and he had me take the tiller. He said I was even good enough to go out on my own now. The tears in his eyes looked like pride and maybe pride was part of it, but now I think he simply knew what was coming.

The storm came on like a light switch. Earlier he had said it would be a great day for sailing, but he didn’t look surprised when the bad weather came. I notice now that I was confused at his calm demeanor.

Then suddenly he struck a defiant pose. He shouted at the sky, “Yea, though I walk below the firmament, in the valley of the shadow of death, I shall not–” Lightning cracked almost on top of us, and I didn’t hear the last word.

It was all I could do to hold onto the ropes, then. And that’s when Dad was washed overboard. He just vanished into the salt water.

I didn’t look up again but gripped the rail until the boat bumped into something. Miraculously, I was back at the dock. The clouds cleared and light shone on Chuck who said he saw me as he was passing by. We called the police from a pay phone, but they never found Dad’s body.

There was a funeral.

Mom put a stone up in the cemetery.

The whole town showed up. Family I’d never met came, stayed for a day, had dramatic fights and resolutions, and then left again without so much as a Christmas card ever again. Like shadows or footnotes. Like most folks.

“Mom, do you cry about Dad?” I asked after the last aunt and uncle left.

Mom was graceful as always, “Of course, dear. Just not out here in the open. What do you expect?”

Then because she finally looked at my face and saw how I was feeling, she dropped her hands from the earrings she was putting on and said “You know Dad will always be in our hearts. Chin up!”

Then she left for her book club.

I thought she was staying strong for me. Now I wonder.

After a few days I went back to school and all the kids had made me cards. There was a banner that said “We’re sorry, Truman”, like it was all about me, not about Dad.

My best friend Marlon could see I wasn’t thrilled.

“Come on, Truman, let’s get out of here. We’ll ride bikes by the pier,” said Marlon.

We loved riding bikes, and the pier was a sweet spot where we would bounce our wheels off the warps and bumps in the boards.

On the way we passed the grocery store.

“Let’s slow down,” I said, and I thought of my dad and the storeroom and the fact that we were two blocks from the Gulf where no one had ever found Dad’s body. I thought about the words Dad shouted before he died. I shall not what? Did it matter? Where did it get him? So stupid.

I had a sudden urge to go anywhere else.

We slowed to a roll. But my heart beat harder with every brick in the road.

We did get to the steps of the pier. But I couldn’t go any farther. Marlon said, “What’s wrong, Truman, you look really scared.”

“I can’t–” But I didn’t know what word came next.

“You should probably stay away from the ocean, buddy,” Marlon said.

And I did. I stopped sailing. I couldn’t walk on a dock or a pier. I couldn’t even cross the one bridge that leads off the island. Until much later.

When I came home to our two story ranch-style, Mom had packed away Dad’s stuff. I thought she must have worked pretty hard to move it all so fast. Of course, as with all of the house work, she had help I didn’t know about.

I sank down on the couch. Aside from one picture of Dad sailing on the boat, Mom had cleared out everything about him. But she had forgotten the bookshelves.

I thought again of Dad’s last words. They were very Biblical. I had never read the Bible on purpose before, but we’d been to church a few times. I scanned the shelves for the Bible.

That’s when I saw another book, and I remembered that day in back of the grocery store again. Those stolen seconds when Dad was so rehearsed but so real. I still had a promise to keep.

I pulled down _Discrete Mathematics And Its Applications_ and took it upstairs to the writing desk in my room. I didn’t do anything to disturb Mom. I was sworn to Secrecy.

Looking back, this moment was Their first mistake. They probably thought a kid reading a giant math book was weird, but not too weird. Kids do weird things when they’re grieving.

Maybe They could tell I was thinking about Dad; he loved math. So They had no reason to suspect anything when I brought it to the little desk in my room, where I always studied.

I had seen this book, blue with orange and green stripes, up on the shelf for months. I still wonder when he gutted it to put in his own pages.

Because when I opened the cover and flipped to the title page, it didn’t say “Discrete Mathematics And Its Applications”. It said “The Sequences”. That was weird. Sure, sequences are a math subject, but a book should have the same title on the outside and the inside. Dad had removed the pages of _Discrete Mathematics_ so it could carry this piece of the Secret instead.

He had scribbled on the new title page, “For my son Truman, the most authentic person I know”, as if he had given the book to me as a birthday present. Now I know he knew he would be leaving. Now I know it was a parting gift.

I turned the page and began to read The Sequences. That’s how I started on a long path that would take me to the darkened door at the edge of the world.

My mother had other ideas for me.


	2. Making Beliefs Pay Rent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A murder in town exposes a crack in 18 year-old Truman's world. Can he use what he has learned to find the killer?

The edge of the world is a blue wall painted with clouds. Painted? Maybe it’s something more sophisticated. I couldn’t be sure, but the clouds might have been moving.

“Mayor Burbank,” a booming voice from nowhere addressed me. This was new.

I was spending too much time thinking over things that were not helping me decide whether to walk through the dark and mysterious door in the wall.

I imagined a probability – flying unseen around my head – of whether I should step through the door. Orbiting that, I perceived a second probability: that I would be brave enough to step through the door if it was the right choice. This second probability was shrinking, even though the first one was growing. I had to decide before I lost my nerve.

The voice continued. I stepped into the dark and shut the door behind me.

***

When I was eighteen, I solved a murder. The next year, I solved another. Over the course of four years, four people were murdered. Four neighbors, killed in unrelated ways by four unrelated persons, also my neighbors.

I solved every murder.

Seahaven Island is home to 3,560 people. The population sign that greets you as you drive over the bridge never changes, and it’s more or less correct all the time. Babies are born. People move in. People die. People leave and are quickly forgotten. The population stays constant.

Four murders out of 3,560 people is a high rate. Each one is about the same as New York City’s record high murder rate in 1980, the last year listed in Seahaven Island Library’s dusty World Book Encyclopedia. Four in a row makes it a trend even though there are high error bars on any single murder-year.

I was waiting tables in the clubhouse at McDermot Green, one of the town’s two golf resorts, while I counted down the last days of my senior year at Seahaven Island High School.

“Thank you, Truman, you always make Saturday brunch so fun,” said one of the ladies in the bridge club that was bustling out into the sunlight as a single mass of floral print fabric.

“Well, hey, thank you, Beverly. Have a good morning. And in case I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!”

I was ready to take my break on the bubblegum bench behind the clubhouse. They say bubblegum is a bad habit. I couldn’t see the harm in it, and all the servers went back there to chew it. It’s satisfying to stick your bubblegum to the phone pole, in among the hundreds of gum wads left there by years of high schoolers figuring out their futures.

Before I could get away, I heard Mr. McDermot shout, “And another thing Partridge. If I ever see your lumpy haggis hole in here again, I’ll call the police and report a vagrant!”

I turned to see Bertrand Partridge, a polo shirt interrupting his leather-tanned arms and neck, replying, “If you do see my face in here again you’ll wish you’d stayed in Scotland with your potatoes and your stone hedge, you low down cat thief!”

Mr. McDermot shouted, “It’s Stonehenge, you heated leather Camry seat!” as Mr. Partridge peeled out of the parking lot.

The other server, Rebecca, whispered, “What’s going on?” She was new and nervous, but she was right that this was unusual. I rushed over to the boss.

“Gee, Mr. McDermot, is everything alright? You and Mr. Partridge were pretty steamed,” I said.

“That low down ingrate, Bertrand Partridge. Do you know he’s been cheating me for years? YEARS!” said Mr. McDermot.

“Wow, what a jerk!” I performed an angry hop. The goof.

“I don’t… I will never… Not a finger!” Mr. McDermot shouted, meaning nothing at all.

“Not a finger!” I repeated to show him I was on board with whatever he was mad at. By this age I had learned to goof and agree.

People expected something from me.

I did not realize the extent to which this was true; I only knew that people who wanted to talk to me would work at it until something happened. If I acted like a goof, they always eased up.

After that, came the agree. If I disagreed with whatever they were saying, they derailed again and started over with their prodding. So I didn’t disagree if I could help it.

After the goof and the agree, it was time for the follow through. The dance of life.

“How did he keep his secret cheating from you all these years?” I probed. This was an excellent follow through because it reiterated Mr. McDermot’s assertion and served as another agree.

“Well, Truman, you know Vera Rossakoff, the new CFO. She figured it out. The scoundrel has been double-billing us for years. YEARS! And now he thinks I stole his cat.”

Mr. McDermot barged past Rebecca and left the room shouting “YEARS!”.

That was the last time I saw Mr. McDermot alive.

My life wasn’t all drama. Right after that I had a perfectly ordinary conversation when the new chief financial officer called me into her office.

“Mr. Burbank,” Vera Rossakoff drawled through an east-European accent, “Take a seat. Is nice to meet you. I’m becoming acquainted with each staff here. I am sorry I take so long to talk to you.”

“No trouble, ma’am. Hey, did you see Mr. McDermot arguing with Bertrand Partridge?” I asked.

“Yes, but I’m afraid I do not know well this Bertrand Partridge,” she said.

“Oh, he’s a big deal in town. Say, where are you from?” This is a traditional Florida greeting no matter who you meet.

“I am from Russia, darling. After my husband died, I am come to Seahaven Island to help my cousin, Charlie McDermot, run this resort.”

“Wow, McDermot to Rossakoff. I’d like to see that family tree,” I said. She laughed, even though it wasn’t funny.

“Yes, well, tree would be written in Russian alphabet, you see.” This wasn’t funny either, but I laughed.

“How do you like Seahaven Island?”

“Oh I love. I love is I can see the sunrise over the ocean when I go run the beach in the morning, and the sunset in evening.”

Usually, it was like that. Just ordinary conversation, laughing at nothing and talking about nothing.

***

A terrified scream cut through a whitewashed world as I approached the clubhouse for my opening shift the next Saturday. A cloudfront had rolled in the night before and it still sat there casting its pale hue on everything.

Frantic, Rebecca burst out the front door, horror plastered on her face, and ran across the gravel parking lot to me.

“Truman! Oh my god, it’s Mr. McDermot!” she shouted.

I froze. Was this a time for a goof and agree?

“He’s dead! He’s been murdered!” she went on shouting.

I settled on what felt natural.

“Oh my god!” I shouted right back into her face.

She was petrified.

“Oh my GOD!” I shouted again right at her, grabbing her outstretched arms, staring at her wide open eyes.

“Oh my GOD!” I repeated one last time for good measure. Then I looked away at nothing and started to shake. I may have laughed a little.

I’d like to say that after eight years of practicing rationality, I had learned to control my emotions. I could think of several reasons why I hadn’t made progress. One was that I wasn’t actually allowed to practice emotional regulation. I was always surrounded by people insisting that I should react to them, not accepting “let’s calm down and think about this” as a response. I felt guilty about not trying harder.

Besides that, emotionlessness is not the goal of rationality. _The Sequences_ often refers to an esoteric book character named Spock. Spock attempted to be rational by rejecting emotions. I gathered that it never worked out for him. Emotions matter. Well-regulated emotions.

There were several other factors affecting my ability to regulate my emotions, but the most pertinent, in this case specifically, is that murder is very weird.

“Truman!” shouted Rebecca, “We have to pull ourselves together!” This was shouting, too.

“We’ve gotta call the police!” I said.

I rushed toward the clubhouse door, but I found myself on the ground looking up into Rebecca’s face. I had slipped on the gravel because she was still holding my arm. She leaned over and insisted, “We can’t go in there…”

“Good god, you’re right.” I sat up, finally not shouting. “We could mess up the whole crime scene.”

I got up and approached cautiously. Through the window by the door I could see the unmistakable form of Mr. McDermot lying face down with a knife in his back.

I called 911 on the payphone.

“They’re on the way.” I said when I hung up.

We could already hear the sirens. Police always arrive quickly. Precious few moments to think.

But what thought would I have anyway? Actually, that was the right question, what thought should I have? I could only think about how I couldn’t think of what to think.

Time’s up. The police cruiser pulled up, followed by a van marked “Forensics”. Officer Linda Groupon stepped out with the rough jaw line I’d seen on her many times and some junior officer I had never seen before. No time to think. I was guaranteed to act out of habit, now.

There was fresh shouting and commotion, until the moment the officers burst into the building, guns drawn. Then everything went deadly quiet.

Silver light from the blanket of clouds outside pierced the room. The noise of crashing pots and pans rang out and we all jumped back as a group.

“Who’s there?” shouted Officer Groupon. “Come out, scumbag, ‘cause I got a M&P 2-point-oh with a full-length steel chassis, a rough textured grip for easy handling, and an improved trigger system available now from Smith & Wesson!”

A cat wandered up to her from the open kitchen door. Officer Groupon cracked a smile and then laughed. Everyone laughed along until her face went suddenly stern and everyone stopped.

“Somebody take this cat and everybody clear out until the mortuary fellas get the body,” she said, holstering her gun.

I fell over myself to catch the cat and shouted “Yes, sir, ma’am!” before I hurried for the exit.

My foot kicked something that went skidding out the door ahead of me.

“Out of the way!” someone commanded.

When the forensics officers had hustled inside with their gurney, I picked up the thing, still holding the cat in one arm. It was a gold pen.

I turned it over to see engraved letters: BP.

Someone inside said the time of death was “probably an hour ago around dawn”.

I shot my hand up in the air, calling out “Officeeer!” The pen slipped from that hand and described an arc through the air, finally thudding on the dining room carpet at her feet.

“What are you doing, Truman?!”

“Officer, I think I found a clue. Last week, Bertrand Partridge threatened Mr. McDermot’s life and now I’m sure this is his cat and that pen has his initials!”

The officer picked up the pen with a handkerchief and peered at it closely.

“Well you ruined any fingerprints we could have gotten from this pen… And how can we be sure this wasn’t here before the murder?”

“Oh, it wasn’t,” Rebecca said, “I closed the clubhouse last night and the floor was spotless. And I was the last one here.”

“Well then, it’s evidence. Good job, Truman.” Officer Groupon got a thoughtful look in her eye. “Truman, how well do you know Bertrand Parker?”

“Partridge.”

“What?”

“That’s his name. Partridge,” I articulated with my arms to emphasize. I had to wave the cat around to do this. It almost jumped away. I caught it again. The goof.

“That’s what I said.”

“Yes, ma’am.” A weak agree.

“Do you know this fella or not, Truman?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’ve waited on him dozens of times. He likes the impression I do of Mayor Cabot.” I leaned and grinned. I almost made the impression, but I’d already done the goof. It was just habit. Snap out of it, Truman. Be smart. Time for the follow through.

“Oh!” I said, “Maybe I could go and talk to him. You know, say I found his cat and then see what else I can get out of him.”

It was a terrible follow through. Why did I offer myself up to confront a murderer? Surely, Officer Linda Groupon, sworn to protect the people of Seahaven Island, would not let me do anything like that.

“That’s a good plan, Truman. You’re a brave citizen.”

***

Officer Groupon let me out of her cruiser a block from Partridge’s house so I could walk the rest of the way without arousing suspicion.

Rebecca said, “Good luck, Truman.” I don’t know why she came along.

I swung my non-cat-holding arm extra far so I’d look natural. Natural for me, I hoped. A chill spring wind blew from the gray sky and gray ocean beyond the house to send shivers through me.

Mr. McDermot had one of the bigger houses in town. The roof had all sorts of twists and turns. All the windows were arches. There were two chimneys, which is a lot for Florida.

I gave Mr. Whiskers a pat. I didn’t know his name, but I called him that. I rang the doorbell, and then there was no turning back. While I waited, I thought about the day Bertrand Partridge called Mr. McDermot a low down cat thief.

If Partridge killed Mr. McDermot for stealing his cat, why did he leave the cat behind? That’s not what I would anticipate. Of all the mistakes he could make–

“Well, hello, Truman.”

“Ah ha!” I said.

“Ah ha?” said Bertrand Partridge, holding open the door.

I hadn’t meant to say ah ha. I quickly held out the cat.

“Ah ha! Hatchimal!” said Bertrand Partridge, putting away an unlit pipe and reaching out with both hands to cradle the cat.

“You don’t know what this means to me, Truman. Where did you find her?” Then he looked at me askance. “Did you get her from that kilt-slinging bilge rat Charles McDermot?”

“Uh… not exactly,” I said, squirming. I tried to read his eyes, but I had trouble even meeting them.

“Uh huh,” he paused in the doorway, waiting for me to go on. If he was a murderer he played dumb really well.

When no words would come from my brain, Mr. Partridge said “Come in, Truman. Have a drink?” He was already walking toward the kitchen. As I came in, I felt sweat around the place where Officer Groupon had taped a wire.

“Sure thing, Mr. Partridge. Pepsi if you’ve got it.”

“Ha, everybody in town has Pepsi. Live For Now!” Partridge called out the Pepsi slogan from the kitchen.

Time to make my beliefs pay rent. Eight years earlier I swore to my dad that I would never breathe a word about _The Sequences_. For a long time I was so paranoid about letting it slip, that I didn’t even practice what I learned.

When I did, some of it became habitual, but a lot of good thinking must be done deliberately. That required time. I had a trick for that. This was my moment.

I pictured a probability orbiting my head. I named this _Partridge Killed McDermot_.

If I believe Mr. Partridge killed Mr. McDermot, what do I anticipate? I thought. Meanwhile I made interested faces at the pictures on the wall.

_He will not admit it. No killer admits things._

_He will have an excuse for where he was at dawn when the murder happened._

_He will be missing his pen._

_He might have cat hair on him even though his cat has been missing for a week._

_He will act like his cat is worth killing over._

And add to that _He will not leave his cat behind after killing someone over it_. Again, I noticed that I was confused. Partridge shouldn’t have left his cat. The probability orbiting my head shrank.

“You like that?”

“What?!” I said.

“That’s my prize-winning yacht!”

“Oh this!” I had been feigning interest in a picture of Partridge posing on a yacht. I wasn’t thinking about the picture. People give me more time to think when I look at things closely. If I stare into space, they show up from nowhere to interrupt me faster. I’ve run several experiments. So I buy myself time to think by looking interested in something.

Partridge pushed a Pepsi into my hand and put an arm around my shoulders.

“Of course, I didn’t win the prize on my prize-winning yacht. Someone else handled that. I just bought the yacht from her after that!” This was hilarious to Partridge so it was hilarious to me, too. The agree. But he had caught me off guard. I hadn’t goofed. He would probably expect a goof.

While we were laughing, I took a look at Partridge’s golf shirt.

He might have cat hair on him even though his cat has been missing for a week. I didn’t notice any. In any case, he had just been holding Mr. Hatchimal Whiskers, so that evidence would be worthless. My orbiting probability remained constant.

I noticed we had finished laughing. He will have an excuse for where he was at dawn…

“So Mr. Partridge, have you gone to see your yacht this morning.” I didn’t think he had, but I had to segue somehow to ask where he was at dawn. Then, in case I was tipping my hand, I quickly slipped on the step as I walked to have a seat in the sunken living room. The goof. Better late than never.

“Watch that first step, it’s a doozy,” he said, taking the chair next to me. “No, I’ve been alone in the den for hours reading the latest Dan Brown novel, Chamber Trench, available at book sellers everywhere. It’s a riveting story about a young man working in a symbology factory that explodes.”

That was not a good excuse. A savvy killer should have a better excuse. My orbiting probability shrank, marginally.

“And speaking of work, shouldn’t you be working at McDermot Green this morning?”

“Uh… I’m not so sure what’s gonna happen with that job after some…” I took a gulp of Pepsi, “uh, recent events.” Yeah, play it cool, Truman.

“Oh, is that right? Well if there’s anything I can do… I might be able to find a position at P&P for you.”

“Actually, maybe…” He will be missing his pen. Follow through… “Could you write down your phone number for me? Uh, so I could call you about that position.”

“Sure thing, Truman. I’ve seen you. You’re a hard worker and a real cut up. Very popular with the over-sixty crowd. Now where’s my pen?”

“Ah ha!”

“Ah ha?” he asked, pulling a pen from his end table drawer and handing it to me. It was black plastic inscribed with “Seahaven Island Humane Society”.

“Uh… Ah ha! There’s your pen. Um…” something to distract him, “Don’t you have a better pen? These cheap pens never write well.”

“As a matter of fact, I only ever use pens from the Humane Society. It’s a very important cause not just here on Seahaven Island, but all over the nation. You can keep this one.”

I wrote down his phone number as he dictated. The pen wrote well. My fingers were sweating though.

I couldn’t decide how the missing-not-missing pen counted as evidence.

I excused myself without asking any more questions about my hypothesis. My _Partridge Killed McDermot_ probability had shrunk a few times, and a few of my anticipations were meaningless. I noticed I was confused, and I figured the police could ask him more questions without my help.

As I stepped out on the porch Partridge said, “Thanks again, Truman, for bringing Hatchimal back to me. I’ve just been so upset since McDermot stole her.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Partridge.” Then I stopped and said, “Say, what makes you think he took her anyway?”

He lifted the cat to look in her eyes, “Well, the last time I saw Hatchimal, she was sniffing around the offices in the clubhouse. I turned my back for a second, then I went to find her. I found McDermot, but Miss Hatchimal was gone. Yes she was. Yes she was. But she wouldn’t leave me, would she? Would you?” All his attention was on the cat now.

I clicked the door closed without another word.

A belief is a tenant and it must pay rent for living in your head or else be evicted. It pays that rent in anticipated experiences. The anticipations my belief had paid me were worthless.

At least the sun had come out.

***

Officer Groupon dropped off Rebecca and me at work. At work! She didn’t need me to report back because she had heard my whole conversation with Partridge over the microphone I wore.

And now we had to go do work at the scene of the murder. Work doesn’t stop just because the owner dies, I guess.

When we arrived, Mrs. Rossakoff was leading a staff meeting.

“… And that is why I know that this team – and I have meet all of you – this team can carry on. Today is tragic for us. A tragic day for whole town. But is ‘Another Beautiful Day Out On McDermot Green’.”

Nobody seemed enthusiastic.

Rebecca shot me a nervous look and then went to the kitchen to get ready for opening.

I followed Vera Rossakoff into her office.

“Mrs. Rossakoff, Rebecca can’t be here. She discovered the body,” I said.

Then I noticed Mrs. Rossakoff was putting her desk things in a cardboard Sysco box. “Good things come from Sysco” was prominently printed on every side in full color.

“You’re not leaving are you? Oh god, of course. He was your cousin. You must be a wreck. He wasn’t married and so you have to take care of his estate.”

“Truman,” she broke in, “Don’t be silly. I’m not leaving. I am moving to Charlie’s office. I’m the boss now.”

I gaped. She was the boss now. How could I turn this into a goof…

“Well, let me take that box for you then! A boss can’t go carrying her own boxes.”

I tripped on nothing and everything fell out of the box onto the floor in the hallway. I’d done this before, so nothing broke. I started picking things up.

“Oh I’m so sorry, Mrs. Rossakoff. I’ll get it all. You know this plant looks great and it’ll love all the windows in your new office.”

“Thank you, Truman.” She did not think my goof was funny, and my agreement with her choice of flora was not engaging her. She was busy checking her box.

“Truman, did you seen my good pen when you dropped… everything?” She was not happy. I misjudged her. You’d think that nobody would like to have their stuff dropped, but I’d seen plenty of people laugh at it before. Not this time.

Maybe I could goof now. I half-scrambled half-stumbled back to the hallway.

“You’ve got to have your good pen,” I agreed. “What does it look like, Mrs. Rossakoff?”

“Is gold.”

I stopped. I thought. But that gold pen at the murder scene had Bertrand Partridge’s initials on it. It couldn’t be…

A new probability started orbiting my head.

I straightened up and stepped into the office. She had her back to me while she was taking things out of the Sysco box. The plant, a souvenir coffee mug with an alligator in a bikini, a leather bound journal with gold Cyrillic letters embossed on it… Вера Россакофф.

If I believed Rossakoff killed Mr. McDermot, what would I anticipate?

_She will not admit it. No killer admits things._

_She will have an excuse for where she was at dawn when the murder happened._

_She will be missing her pen with her initials on it. The initials BP in the Cyrillic alphabet._

_She might frame someone else by leaving their cat with the body._

_She would have incentive._

Anticipation after the fact isn’t optimal. So I focused on the two items I didn’t know already.

_She will have an excuse for where she was at dawn…_

“Did you enjoy the sunrise this morning, Mrs. Rossakoff?”

She paused while taking a stapler out of the box.

“What? Oh yes, I always enjoy on my run. Was beautiful today.”

My probability grew larger. Why was she lying…? She put the stapler down and picked a copy of _Microsoft® Excel® Dashboards & Reports for Dummies_ out of the box.

_She would have incentive._

“So how is it that you’re the boss now, Mrs. Rossakoff?”

“Truman. You are very silly. As Charlie’s only living relative, I own McDermot Green now.”

The orbiting probability grew again. I was rich with valuable anticipated experiences.

***

There had been no sunrise to be seen through the clouds that morning. A few minutes after I placed the call, we all watched as Officer Groupon led Vera Rossakoff away in handcuffs.

The papers would later say it was an open and shut case. Rossakoff had attempted to frame Bertrand Partridge for the murder of Charles McDermot, but her lost pen had been the clue that unravelled everything.

Her office plant was the catnip she used to lure Hatchimal to her office. She had lied about where she was at dawn, the time of the murder. I was surprised the police took Bayesian evidence so seriously. I thought they’d call it all circumstantial. For years afterward, I would remember the first murder I solved and ponder if it was normal. Even after I found out what a joke the government is on Seahaven Island, I wanted to believe that when it really mattered somebody knew what they were doing.

Anyway, she confessed.

I was behind the clubhouse on the bubblegum bench when Rebecca found me. I hadn’t stopped moving for a moment during my shift. I was afraid to. But in the end I ran out of steam and I had nowhere to be. I had already spat out my gum. It was not helping.

“Truman, are you okay?” Rebecca seemed more nervous than usual.

“I’m still thinking about it, Rebecca. We saw him there. Just lying there. Dead.” I didn’t have it in me to goof.

Rebecca sat down next to me.

“I guess They didn’t– I mean, I guess you took it harder than I thought.” She seemed really unprepared for a conversation.

“I don’t know how people get over this. We just worked a four hour shift and now… We’re supposed to just walk around in the world. Where people die sometimes. And other people find them dead.”

A gentle breeze blew our hair.

“And it was all for money. Just to own some stupid grass. And I thought it was Bertrand Partridge, Jesus,” I said.

“You feel guilty about Mr. Partridge?” Rebecca asked.

“I… guess not. At least he didn’t actually go to jail,” I said.

“I feel guilty,” she said.

“Oh. Wait, why?” I looked over at her now. She looked made up, not like she had just worked the morning shift after finding a body.

Rebecca got a determined look in her eye and then turned away for a moment. Thinking back, I’m sure she was deciding whether or not to help me. It would cost her.

She took a deep breath and when she turned back the look of determination was replaced by her usual demur new-girl nervousness. The change in attitude was jarring.

“Isn’t it weird that they both had the initials BP?” she said in an innocent voice.

“Yeah,” I said. “That was a helpful surprise. We can assume Mrs. Rossakoff chose Mr. Partridge to frame on purpose.”

“Maybe. But isn’t it very weird?” she asked.

How weird was it that they had the same initials?

The cat was a fake clue, a frame up. Rossakoff wanted us to find it because it pointed to Bertrand Partridge. But the cat had nothing to do with the initials BP.

The pen was a real clue. Rossakoff did not plant that on purpose. If she had known about it, she would not have asked me where it was. She would have pretended not to have a gold pen.

But what a weird coincidence that the initials on the pen _still_ pointed to Bertrand Partridge. It was an accident that fit just right with her plan. That was too convenient.

I wish I’d had the stroke of genius to realize I was being tested. They must have worried that I would figure it out – figure out that I lived in a fake world – but I wasn’t there yet.

Instead, a new probability went into orbit around my head. It was called _Something Is Wrong_ , and it started vague and small.

A car honked twice in the parking lot. It was Rebecca’s usual ride home.

Rebecca didn’t move.

“Truman…” she screwed up her eyebrows and her dad honked again. “Nevermind. I gotta go. I hope I see… I mean. Goodbye, Truman.” She hugged me – which was unusual – and started to rush away.

“Hey, Rebecca.”

She turned to look at me. The honks were becoming frantic.

“In case I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight.”

I did not see her again. She moved away, and no one knew where.

I don’t think about the other murders much. After the first one, the only thing that made the rest weird was that I kept solving them and they kept happening. Up until the year when I’d had enough – of murders and of everything – and I started to break the system.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With apologies to Agatha Christie who devised the mystery in her short story "The Double Clue". And to the writers of "Murder, She Wrote", who cribbed it before me in an episode called "An Egg to Die For". Thumbs up to both for hiding the fatal flaw very well.


	3. The Map is Not The Territory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 10 year-old Truman’s mother gets rid of his book. Can he save the last link he has to his father?

The darkness was complete when I closed the door behind me. I was beyond the edge of the world for the first time ever. Of course it was dark there.

Then off to my left a utility lamp flickered on over another door. A speaker there crackled to life.

“Mayor Burbank,” said the same nowhere Voice from before.

My spirit rose which embarrassed me. I couldn’t let myself think of this as a friend just because I felt completely alone. This was a pest. At least until I was ready.

“Truman…”

I gave my eyes time to adjust from the daylight to the dimmer lamp light, but they just didn’t. There was nothing but the lamp and the door. Nothing at all. No walls, no size. It was an impossible place.

 _Any sufficiently advanced technology…_ For a moment I worried that there might be obscenely magical technology in the world beyond Seahaven Island.

But these thoughts were just my map. The blackness of the room was more perfect than my eyes could distinguish. This place was probably real; it was just invisible.

“You’re lost, Truman.”

I looked down at myself. The light touched my shoes, my clothes, the pen in my shirt pocket. I reached out in front of me and saw my hand touch a flat nothing. But it felt cool and softly smooth. Nothing out of the ordinary. I decided it was just very black paint.

This was an ordinary hallway leading from one door to another.

“It’s all for you, Truman.” The Voice could go on for all I cared. I didn’t become the mayor by answering people when they demanded it.

Still, he did have my attention. It was all for me? Who else would it be for? My neighbors back on Seahaven Island? All fakers. And what did they get out of it? Maybe it _was_ all for me.

“You are our shining star. Our hopes and dreams.” A shining star? I’d been treated like a brilliant fool.

I approached the door.

If he was lying, what was the opposite of a shining star? Was I really a dull meteor? Too literal. This was a metaphor about being special.

“What are you looking for, Truman? Why did you leave your home?”

I set my hand on the door handle and paused.

Stars are special and singular. Was the lie that I was not special or that I was not singular? Were there others? If there were we were all being taken for fools.

“Listen closely, Truman. It’s very important that you stay put. We’re sending a car to help you. Then we’ll explain everything.”

I let my hypothesis launch into orbit around my head: _I Am Not The Only One_. It was vanishingly small. The only hypothesis I had.

Now it was time to hide. And I thought that I could, because the Voice was sending a car and telling me that I should stay put.

If he needed me to stay put, that likely meant They couldn’t track me past the edge of the world. So instead They wanted to bait my curiosity. Promise me what I couldn’t resist. “We’ll explain…” But They didn’t know how much I could resist.

I twisted the handle. The door opened to an empty corridor as wide as Main Street and twice as high. All metal and concrete, brightly lit. Ahead I could see a few hundred yards and then the curve of the corridor blocked my view. Back the other way the same thing, with no hiding place in sight.

This might be harder than I thought. Keep looking, Truman.

The wall on my left had a map. “You are here.” I could feel time running out, but this was valuable information. It showed that the corridor was a huge circle surrounding the familiar territory of Seahaven Island. I was in the south.

Due west of the city was an opening that connected the corridor to the only road and bridge onto Seahaven Island. Of course.

The west side was busy with labels for things like Main Offices and Food Services near the road opening, whereas the entire east side was just a series of large empty storage facilities – empty on the map, but surely more interesting in the territory.

Since I guessed that my pursuers would come from the busy area, I started to run east toward the nearest storage facility. Then I stopped short. What was I doing?

I went back and ripped the map off the wall. I would grok it later.

As I headed east again, I looked for anything in my vicinity to give me ideas. I ran past a row of old clothes dryers set by the wall on pallets. They were no help. They weren’t connected, but even if they had been, I didn’t know the secret code to get them to open up to the basement level.

***

“Truman, hurry up! You’ll be late for your camping trip.”

“But Mom, can’t I pack just one book?” I protested, 10 years old and wishing I didn’t have to go camping with the Panther Scouts.

“No books, Truman. You need to focus on flinging arrows or tying knots or whatever,” my mother said, straightening the collar on my uniform.

“I don’t need to learn about tying knots. I already got my knot tying badge because Dad taught me every knot in the book last year. The _booook_ …”

“Truman, please. That voice is obnoxious.”

I didn’t want to bring books. This was part of my grand scheme.

In the weeks since Dad had died, I had to find excuses for why I was in my room all the time. Naturally, since I was actually reading a book, I had gone to the library and checked out lots of books. I was in the depths of a distraction campaign. If I could convince Mom I wanted to read textbooks and sci-fi all summer, she would not suspect that I was studying The Secret.

To complete the illusion, I really did read those other books. It took up a lot of my time. I was in the middle of _Stranger in a Strange Land_ by Robert A. Heinlein. I was just ten years old, so I ignored the confusing parts.

Mom’s response to all the reading had been, “Truman you’ve been in your room reading too much. I hate it. Reading makes you boring. You need to get outside. I signed you up for the Panther Scouts.”

I took it as evidence that my scheme was working too well.

So now I was headed to the woods on the north side of the island with nine other boys and girls.

In reality, I didn’t want to bring a book on this trip. I had another plan.

All the kids got one map and one compass at the Panther Scouts meeting a week before. And that’s when I had gotten the idea. If I had to be outside in the territory, I was going to make a map for myself.

***

“Whatever, I don’t care,” said Marlon when I asked him what he wanted to do during the camp out. We were among a jumble of kids standing around the strip mall parking lot where our parents had dropped us off. He sounded like he cared about something. I guessed he was mad at me.

I hadn’t seen Marlon much lately. Most summers we would meet at the end of the block every day and then do whatever we wanted until dinner time. When this summer had started, I had spent my time reading and forgotten about him.

“Alright, Scouts!” Mr. Waldenbooks was the very loud scout master from Pennsylvania. “We’re gonna go out there and have some fun! But we also have to be safe! Safety means!: Get a buddy! Do not leave your buddy! Do not touch the animals! Leave nature how you found it! And follow the map! Everything you want to see is on the map!”

Everybody grabbed their packs and started walking from the parking lot of the L. Ron Hubbard Shoppes, down past the billboard for “Crest® Complete Whitening + Scope”, left at Meryl Scott’s house (since she was one of the kids on this trip, it was really pointless that she met us at the parking lot), past the Morgan & Morgan “For The People” Retention Pond, and into the woods.

“Marlon, what’s wrong?” I asked, rushing to keep up.

“It doesn’t matter, Truman. Just have fun.” We marched over dead leaves in silence for half a moment. Then he said, “I mean why do you care anyway. You’re the shining star around here. I’m just Marlon. I’m basically a sidekick.”

“I don’t know what– I don’t get it,” I said.

“Yeah, you wouldn’t. You know, you read a lot of books for somebody–”

“Scouts!” Mr. Waldenbooks said, “If we are all quiet!, we may be able to see a Florida panther!, our namesake!”

All the kids kept talking, but softly. We kept walking, but Mr. Waldenbooks came back to Marlon and me and said, “Mr. Pastel, I want to talk with you.” Then he walked Marlon to the back of the line and I didn’t hear anything else.

I was thinking about making my map. Oh shoot, I should start right away.

I kept walking as I reached into my pack to get my drawing pad. I was thinking about my plan to chart an area and then move to the next and chart that and put page numbers so they were in order. That’s when I bumped into Meryl and everything fell out of my backpack.

“Truman, look what you did. What are you doing,” she said. It was a scolding, not a question. I felt like a ridiculous goof.

“I just– Sorry, it was my fault,” I said.

“That’s ok, let me help you.” Wow, her attitude just flipped when I agreed with her. We put my things back in my backpack, then she said, “Have you ever thought of changing your hair? You’d look better with different hair.”

“Uh… sorry?” I said. Sorry worked once, and it was all I could think of saying.

“Ha! You’re so funny, Truman,” and she walked away. I was funny?

As I thought about changing my hair, we emerged into a meadow.

“Scouts! Now we see nature in all its beauty! Flat! Florida flat! Everybody spread out and pitch your Coleman® tents!” Mr. Waldenbooks struck a heroic pose for about half a minute before he helped Kurt Panasonic untangle his tent poles.

***

In the middle of the night I had to pee. My mom had always discouraged me from peeing outside, but Mr. Waldenbooks had designated two zones that were “out of field of vision!,” one for boys and one for girls.

I got lost. I had a flashlight, but everything is different at night. I didn’t bring my map, because I thought I knew what to do. But this tree in particular was not in the right place and it seemed like all the other trees had shuffled around to compensate.

A mind is like a map. It has information. It’s not always accurate, but it’s the best you’ve got and sometimes you can work around the mistakes. That’s if you keep in mind that mistakes exist.

When you’ve just woken up and you have to pee pretty bad, you forget to watch for mistakes. And so they compound.

The map is not the territory. No matter how much you walk in circles and tell yourself the next thing you see will make sense, this belief does not make it so. The map must follow the territory, and your brain needs to do the same thing.

This philosophy was about one step removed from what I needed to be thinking about, and thinking about not thinking about it only got me further from thinking about what to do. Then I heard Kurt talking some distance away. I called out “Hey!”

Nobody answered. But I was sure I heard him from just over there, so I just walked in that direction.

I didn’t find Kurt. I found a clothes dryer sitting in a clearing.

Well, it looked like a clothes dryer. It was a large metal box, the right size, and it had knobs on top. It was set on top of a concrete pad.

I was truly lost. I sat on the edge of the concrete pad and stared into the dark.

Before he died, my dad told me to read _The Sequences_ , and made me promise not to talk about it. But I made one other promise – to remember “The map is not the territory.” Why was that important? It was in the book. I would have gotten to it. Why did he single out that one?

A flashlight shone in my face and said, “Um… What are you doing in the girls’ zone?” It was Meryl.

“What? Oh jeez. Is that where I am?” I stood up real fast and froze in place.

“Well. Did you go already or do you need a minute?” Meryl lowered her flashlight and smirked at me. She came to stand by the concrete pad.

“I couldn’t, uh, find the urinal.” She laughed at that so I kept going. “Just this weird clothes dryer.”

Her laugh cut off short. “That’s not a dryer.”

“Yeah, I know. I mean, it doesn’t even have a door on–”

“It’s an electric box. Like from the electric company,” she said quickly.

“I don’t know. That would make this a bad place to pee. And it’s not marked at all. Don’t they usually put the name of Florida Gas & Electric on that kind of stuff?” I looked around all sides of it.

“Oh, look at Truman who knows all about… city, uh, services and stuff.” She scowled.

I liked it better when she was laughing.

“I’ll just be going.” And I backed into a bush, fell down, and got tangled.

Now Meryl giggled. “I like you, Truman.”

I got up and walked down the path Meryl had come in on. I was smiling all the way to the boys’ zone. The boys’ zone, which did not have a big unlabeled box.

***

“Oh, I took them all back to the library,” Mom said.

I never made my map in the end. I was rattled from my twenty minutes lost in the woods, and so the next morning I just made sure to stay with the group and do whatever they did until we all went home. And since I already had the same map everyone else had, I marked down everything I saw. Starting with the restroom zones and the weird box, and even the place where we saw a Florida panther before lunch time.

When I got home, I was shocked to discover my room was clean. It was supposed to be covered in stacks of books. But the worst part was that _The Sequences_ was gone.

“What?!? Mom, they weren’t all library books!” Why was she doing this to me?!?

Mom crossed her arms, then waved a hand at the room. “Oh, well I didn’t recognize any of them. I thought they were all from the…” But I didn’t hear any more. I was already on my bike outside and then I was racing to the library.

I wasn’t waiting. I wasn’t going to stop for anything. Even though the wind and tears were stinging eyes. What an awful woman my mother was. Now was the time to act.

But as I turned the corner at Whirlpool Avenue, I saw the whole street was blocked by a delivery truck with steam pouring from its engine. I couldn’t even see through the cloud, so I biked back out, past a row of immaculate lawns, and down to Hershey Avenue.

I started to think Mom did it on purpose. She had probably read the book and figured out The Secret and sent me away so she could get rid of it. Or burn it up.

When I reached Hershey Avenue I saw Mrs. Nike with her little dog Jordan. She had fallen in the grass somehow and Officer Groupon was taking her statement. Her nameless junior officer partner was stopping cars in the street and probably asking if anyone saw anything. The chance of getting stopped was too much for me, so I turned around again.

The next street was Gulf Boulevard, the road that runs beside the Gulf of Mexico. I could hear the seagulls arguing. I didn’t want to be any closer to the ocean. Not now especially. I turned around and went two blocks in the wrong direction. I was crying again, and I was desperate.

But I wasn’t going to stop for anything. My mother couldn’t get between me and the last thing Dad ever gave me.

I arrived and let my bike crash in the grass as I raced up the library steps. The doors were locked. What? The hours of operation showed they were supposed to be open on Tuesday afternoons. What the heck was going on? I knocked and knocked, but no one came to the door.

I sat on the steps and put my face in my hands, crying fresh tears. Passing cars blew my hair around. It was hopeless. There was nothing to do. It was all lost forever. I was a failure and the last connection I had to my dad was gone forever. I only had to feel bad for myself. Grim resignation overtook me. There was nothing else. There was no future.

After a time I raised my head and looked around. The big library clock stood between the sidewalk and the street. It was 3:42 PM and 73°F/22°C. What could I do? What would a rationalist do?

A rationalist wouldn’t give up. The map of the world that I kept in my head had no solutions. But the real world had more things.

The real world had a clock.

I realized what a rationalist would do. I closed my eyes, intent on spending five whole minutes just thinking. When you believe there are no choices, you’re just not thinking hard enough. Or, I guess, long enough.

Wait, how was I supposed to know when five minutes passed? I opened my eyes to peek at the time.

“What are you doing now, Truman?” Meryl was leaning on the clock, arms folded. “I knew you were a nerd, but I didn’t know you prayed at the library.”

“Meryl!” I stood up. “I was, uh… I need a book.”

“Seems like the right place, Tru,” she gave me a look like I was an idiot.

“But it’s closed.”

“You know… I heard that there are other books on Seahaven Island.” She walked over to me.

“I’m… looking for a specific book. It was my dad’s, and my mom brought it here by accident.” I could feel my face getting hot because I was sure she would ask the name of the book. I hoped Meryl couldn’t tell I was blushing.

“Then we need to get in there, Truman. Quit turning red and think of something!” She clapped her hands twice at me.

“Ok!” I was ready to panic.

“Think, Truman!”

“Let’s break in the back door!” I blurted.

“Truman! Juvenile delinquency? I like it. Let’s go.” She grabbed my hand, and we ran through the grass to the back of the Library.

The back was a parking lot for the librarians. It was just a square of asphalt surrounded by buildings and an alley road, with sand and scratchy weeds poking through at the seams. The door was locked, so we knocked and yelled, but no one came. I suddenly realized I didn’t know how to start breaking in a door. I said that to Meryl and sank down on the doorstep, ready to fall apart again.

“But what are those, Truman?” and she pointed.

“Windows! Maybe they’re unlocked. Ah, but they’re too high,” I said.

“Well,” Meryl said, hands on her hips. “Lift me up.”

I wasn’t so sure. It was a moment of truth. Did I really want to start down the path of a criminal? What were the probabilities? I thought about my principles. Mostly I was scared of what my mom would say.

“It’s hot out here, Tru.”

On the other hand, what would Dad have thought? That did it. I interwove my fingers and crouched down. Meryl stepped into my palms. My fingers slipped and Meryl fell on the ground; ten year olds are not made for this.

“Truman!”

“I’m sorry!”

“Jeez! Shit, that hurts.” I had never heard anyone curse before. I’d only recently seen it in books, and then it was only said by roughneck space soldiers, so I was surprised. She didn’t strike me as a space soldier type. On the other hand, she did like to wisecrack. Maybe she _was_ a space soldier.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, let’s try again.”

“I don’t know if your dad’s book is worth it, Truman.”

“I’m so sorry, please, we have to get it. It’s all I’ve got. God, my stupid mom! Why is she trying to ruin my life?!?” Tears were welling up again. Hopelessness was washing over me, and it felt like losing my dad again.

“Just kidding, fella. Hold it together. But don’t drop me again. I’m a proper lady.”

She was holding it together enough for the both of us. And so I took a deep breath and lifted the proper lady space soldier up to the window. Once she got hold, she pulled herself up to sit on the ledge and sat there to lift up the unlocked window. Good luck for once.

“It’s a bathroom,” she said, once her head was all the way in.

“What do you kids think you’re doing?” said a new voice, then it wheezed.

It was Miss Wormwood, the youngest librarian, who was from Arkansas. She looked worn out, like she’d been running in her business skirt.

I said, “Nothing!” as Meryl said, “Hi! Can we use your bathroom?”

Miss Wormwood was leaning on the door, trying to catch her breath.

Meryl scrambled down, and before Miss Wormwood could answer her first question she said, “Hey, where were you when we were knocking on the door?”

“I was in the basement,” Miss Wormwood was starting to recover now. “I had to come when I noticed how adamant you both were. Especially you.” She shot an evil look at Meryl.

Buildings in Florida don’t have basements. Especially on islands. The groundwater level treats the basement as a sort of boat. Buildings can’t take the stress unless the basement is made special.

“Florida doesn’t have basements,” Meryl said. I was worried she would make Miss Wormwood mad and then we’d never get inside. I tried to shoot her a look, but she was busy staring defiantly at the closest authority figure.

“Right. I mean the… the the the. Copy room. That’s what we call– Listen, what do you want, kid?”

“Truman left his book here.” Meryl gestured at me with her thumb.

“Truman, it’s nice to see you again,” Miss Wormwood said genuinely.

“Hello, ma’am.”

“You left a book here?”

“Yes, ma’am. Well, I mean my mom did. She didn’t know it was mine.”

“It’s _Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications_ , right?”

My heart rose and then sank. Shit. I wasn’t supposed to talk about the book, and now they both knew which one it was. “Yes, ma’am,” I muttered.

“Come on in, Truman; I know just where it is.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” We started to walk in as she held open the door.

“Not you,” said Miss Wormwood.

“What?” protested Meryl. “I’m here for the adventure.”

“Well, the adventure is over. And your mother called. She wants to see you right away.” Miss Wormwood shared a momentary stare with Meryl, which seemed to mean something I couldn’t understand. Then she added, “You wouldn’t want her to ground you. I can see you like spending time with your friend Truman.”

Meryl stared defiantly for another moment, but then her expression melted. She said, “It’s ok, Truman. Go in with this grump. We did it!” She hugged me before I could object and walked away down the sandy alley toward her house. Soon she was obscured by a short palm tree, a green dumpster, the next building.

Miss Wormwood smiled sweetly, all the malice gone, and said, “Come on in, Truman.”

I walked into the library. All the lights were on. The only sign that it was closed was that no one else was there.

“Why is the library closed, Miss Wormwood?” I asked.

“I am a little deaf in my left ear; speak a little louder next time,” she said.

I would have repeated myself, but we reached the copy room – what she had called the basement. I couldn’t see any resemblance to a basement.

It had two machines and a table. At first I didn’t notice my book on the table.

“I’ve seen that machine before,” I gawked. “In the woods, last night.”

Miss Wormwood started to look worn out again. “I’m sure you didn’t. That’s a very expensive copy machine. No one would put one out in the woods.”

“Well, it’s a little different. It opens at the top. But it’s mostly the same. It’s the same size. It has the same knobs and buttons on the control panel. Like a dryer,” I said.

“Truman, stop touching that. It’s for librarian use only. Look, here’s your book.”

The sight of _The Sequences_ put all thoughts of dryers and copy machines and unmarked electrical equipment out of my head. I took it and held it tightly.

“Alright, you’ve got your book. I’m sure you won’t have any more trouble,” said Miss Wormwood as she shuffled through papers on the table.

“What do you mean?” I asked. What more trouble was possible?

Miss Wormwood turned to me and sighed. She put down her freshly-stacked papers and inclined her head to better look me in the eyes. “Truman. I like you. Your mother likes you. Everyone in town likes you very much. Nobody wants you to be upset. If it’s a book that makes you happy, then your mother doesn’t want to take that away from you. We’re all pulling for you, Truman.”

I believed her. How did she know I was mad at my mother? Then I asked, “Did you read it?”

She hesitated and then straightened up and said, “No, of course not. It’s your personal property.”

I thanked Miss Wormwood and left again through the back door.

“Hey, Truman.” Marlon was sitting on his bike in the library’s back parking lot.

“Marlon. What are you doing here?” Marlon hadn’t talked to me at all during the camp out. And I didn’t bother him either.

“Your mom told me you were here. She said you needed your bookbag.” He was wearing it, so he took it off and held it out for me. We were still friends.

“Oh. Yeah, I guess I do.” I put _The Sequences_ in it and slipped it over my shoulder.

We walked around to the front of the library to get my bike.

“Sorry I got upset at the camp out. You know, it was the first time I’ve seen you this summer.”

“Yeah, I know. Is that what made you mad?” I asked.

“Yeah, man. I just want us to…” but he didn’t finish his thought. “And my mom said I got used to being alone and forgot how to behave myself when people are watching.”

I smiled. “It’s ok. Hey, do you wanna go to the playground?”

Marlon smiled too. “You know it, man.”

We raced bikes like we always used to before my dad died.

***

I was in the library again the next day when Meryl jumped out at me. “Ha! I knew I’d find you here,” she said much too loudly.

I yelped – also too loudly – and I glanced over to see if Miss Wormwood would give me an evil look. She hadn’t noticed. I picked up the books I had dropped: _My Teacher Is An Alien_ by Bruce Coville; _Secrets of Lock Picking_ by Steven Hampton; and _Everything You Need To Know About the Union for Climate Action_ by Richard N. L. Andrews. I had to replenish my supply.

“Meryl, I’ve never seen you actually inside the library,” I said.

“I like to try new things. Besides after I saw the bathroom through the window, how could I resist seeing the rest of this place.”

That’s when Miss Wormwood noticed us. “If you like bathroom humor, you should check out Shakespeare.”

“Hi, Miss Wormwood,” I said. Then I pulled Meryl over to the furthest row of shelves. “Hey, what happened to you? Why did your mom call you home yesterday? How did she know to call the library?”

Meryl’s good mood dropped away. She sighed. “Uh, my mom always knows where I am. Like she has eyes everywhere.” Then she grimaced. “Don’t listen to me, I’m stupid.”

A minor genius would have stopped right there and asked why it was stupid to use a typical expression in its proper manner. Sherlock Holmes could have put it together at once, that “eyes everywhere” was too accurate, and that’s why she excused the expression.

I was just glad to talk to her. So, as she requested, I didn’t listen to her unintentional clue. Instead, I followed through.

“Did you get in trouble?”

“I… The… My mom likes you… you could say. And after a while she decided it’s a good idea for me to keep hanging out with you. I, um… I just have to stop being… uh, rude to people like Miss Wormwood. And watch what I say.”

“What did you say?” I asked.

“I said, ‘Ok, Mom.’”

“No, I mean… nevermind.” I had been trying to ask why her mother told her to watch what she said. To who? Why?

Now I think that she knew just what I meant. She had almost been swept away from Seahaven Island like so many other people. She had to play Their game. So she couldn’t tell me what she wasn’t allowed to say. _I_ was who she couldn’t tell about things like basements and strange boxes in the woods and the real reason Miss Wormwood looked like she had run a hundred yards and climbed a flight of stairs that day.

Marlon arrived just then. “Hey, Truman, ready to go ride bikes?”

I looked over at Meryl.

I can’t hold it against her that she played Their game. After all, if she had not pushed me to think of breaking into the library, They might never have given my book back.

“I’m coming too,” she said, and suddenly we were a gang.

Marlon and Meryl and I had a great summer after that. I came out of my room every day. I only read when I went home. I threw my attention into our time together, like Valentine Michael Smith would have. I didn’t finish _Stranger in a Strange Land_ until years later. The second half gets weird. But I like that the friendships stay strong.

Those were the kinds of friendships I believed in that summer. But they don’t happen on Seahaven Island. That was my last summer with Marlon and Meryl.


	4. Inferential Distances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 21-year-old Truman is sick of the chaos. But does that justify a life of crime?

_How many more escapes will I have to devise?_

I was picking the lock on the first door I had come to. My heart was pounding out of my chest, and I was sure someone was going to come down the corridor at any moment.

The map of the edge of the world said this was the door to a storage facility and the rolling garage door nearby confirmed that. It would be good enough.

As the lock clicked open, I whispered thanks to Steven Hampton, author of _Secrets of Lock Picking_ , and to Richard Feynman whose lessons about bureaucratic idiocy had given me the confidence to carry a pen that was good for picking locks.

 _Feynman is great, but I have to focus._ I opened the door and scanned the room. An orange rack of boxes stretched up toward a high roof. But no one was around. Just security cameras.

I peeked cautiously around the first rack. Identical racks repeated for some distance, but I was alone. Even the nowhere Voice had not followed me.

This was too convenient. I whispered the thing about not looking gift horses in the mouths while I checked the nearest cabinet. There was a box of garbage bags inside. _Perfect._ I moved from camera to camera around the room tying a bag over each one.

Now I was really alone.

I raced up and down the aisles of the warehouse trying to spot things that I could use to make my next escape really count.

_Bicycle tires, boxes of Columbia House CD’s, bikini alligator coffee mugs, spools of rope, beach buckets and shovels, gravel, a tempting aisle with boxes of books, PVC pipe, storm drain covers, forklift, a door marked Emergency Exit, paint cans..._

I stopped short. An emergency exit.

I had always assumed Seahaven Island was a real place where things were real, even as I grew suspicious of my neighbors. I assumed books about the world were real. As much as I doubted people, I still believed in trees and birds. There’s no reason to doubt the universe when you have the sky and everything under it.

But I never had the sky.

In my escape, I had set sail expecting to come back to land. There would be another city, a lawyer, the FBI, someone I could ask for help. I believed in these things.

Instead I had reached the edge of the world. If I was smart I would have wondered what else was fake.

But it looked like the outside world would have normal things. Books, gravel, PVC pipe, marketing scams, and emergency exits. I was relieved before I even knew I was worried. And sure, these things could have been invented for Seahaven Island, but I could still walk out the door and stand under the real sky.

I looked out the little window in the door. There it was. Bright, blue, ordinary. There were clouds. And down on earth, trees in the distance.

I could just throw open the door and head for that forest. Breathe free air. Make a mad dash for the next town and ask for help. If there was a next town.

 _I’m running out of time!_ I needed to get out of there, but it had to be clean. If they followed me into the forest, my chances would fall. I had to at least buy myself time.

I needed to die.

I devised and initiated a hasty plan. I gathered ropes and started tying them from the first orange rack to the door where I had come in. Then I paused. I planned to balance the orange rack precariously so it would crash down when someone pulled the ropes by opening the door. This wasn’t going to work.

 _New plan._ I left the ropes tied to the racks and door and ran to the forklift. I put on the hardhat and orange vest I found inside, and then I drove the forklift behind the first rack.

As soon as someone burst through the door, I would hit the lever to raise the forklift and it would tip the rack over for me. The rack was too far from the door to hurt anyone, but I would scream as it fell and then I’d slip out the emergency exit in my hardhat and orange vest. Hopefully they’d think I was dead or hurt under there. If anyone was still looking outside, maybe my outfit would make them think I was just a warehouse worker.

 _Not enough destruction…_ It would be too easy to see I wasn’t under all the mess. I moved the forklift behind the second rack. Rack two would knock over rack one and there’d be a complicated mess.

I opened a few red paint cans and placed them on the second rack to add a little pizzazz.

Between this and the way I escaped from Seahaven Island, I was making even more trouble than the night I wound up in jail.

I waited… I must have burned fifteen minutes since I had come in. Learning the forklift had taken half that time.

_Where are these idiots?_

I checked my work. I even put a hypothesis into orbit around my head of how likely my plan was to succeed. I reconsidered all the variables.

Still no one came.

Something was wrong. If They could track me through Seahaven Island with their hidden cameras, they should be smart enough to notice these security cameras went black.

Someone must have come to look for me at the dark doorway where I left the world. I wasn’t there anymore, but how stupid could they be? Did they just assume I couldn’t get through the nearest door because it was locked?

_God, so much failure…_

After a few minutes, I wandered back and browsed the labels on the boxes of books.

“Hey, I know these books!” I said aloud. One of my first acts as mayor was to order new books for the library. Every single book they had was over 30 years old. Kathryn Wormwood had blamed the post office when the shipment never arrived in the library. But they were here.

I looked over the boxes. Most of them were glued shut for shipping, but they all had labels. I soon found three with the label I wanted: _The 2020 World Book Encyclopedia_.

Where to start… I considered the outstanding hypotheses orbiting my head. I had two: one was about the forklift plan; the other was _I Am Not The Only One_. That’s when a deep sinking sensation hit me.

I pulled open World Book Box #1, ripping the glue that held it closed.

I pulled out Volume 2, the B’s, and opened it about a quarter of the way from the end. _Bug (Computing)_. No. I kept flipping pages. _Burbank, California. Burbank, South Dakota. Burbank, Washington._ I finally took a breath. There was no article for _Burbank, Truman_.

I was the focus of some giant conspiracy, but at least I wasn’t famous. I must be a secret. I shivered at the horror of it. But this was good to know. All I had to do was expose the secret, and I’d get my freedom. I could go back to the forklift and just relax with the encyclopedia.

But I couldn’t leave well enough alone. I wanted this to be true, so it was suspect. I refused to fall victim to motivated stopping. I needed to check for _Seahaven Island_.

I didn’t have to rip the glue on Box #3, and I found out why. Someone had taken S to Sn.

“God damn it!” I shoved the whole box to the ground, spilling the volumes. How could They have known I would show up here to look for it?

Not for the first time, I wished I had Meryl and Marlon with me. Like always I wrote off this feeling as nostalgia. I did fine on my own.

I took a breath. _Next step, Truman._ I reached in among the scattered books and found the Reference Index instead. The last volume of an encyclopedia lists everything you could think of and where it can be found, even in other articles.

 _Burbank, South Dakota_ , Volume 2, page 314.

 _Burbank Airport-South station_ , Volume 9, page 104; Volume 2, page 311.

 _Burbank, Truman_ , See _Truman Show, The_.

My eyes stuck there, trying to see through it to something that made sense. _Truman Show, The_. Whatever this was it was very bad.

***

I stepped through the open doors of a warehouse at the docks. It smelled like fish and ocean, but if I couldn’t see the water I trusted I wouldn’t get too nervous.

It was a few months after I turned 21 and I was solving a murder: the fourth and final murder as it would turn out.

I had seen Bertrand Partridge step into this building wearing a polo shirt and a necktie. I wondered again at the irony that he’d turned out to be a murderer after I got him off the hook three years earlier. I had doubted it when I put it all together. It felt too coincidental. But just because he was innocent of one murder, that didn’t lower my estimation that he was a murderer this time. The hypothesis _Partridge Killed Gilbert_ had grown heavier until it fell out of orbit and burned into my brain.

Now I needed to get a confession out of him so Officer Linda Groupon would believe me. I just wished she’d give me some credit. I was always right.

The warehouse was abuzz with workers, so I grabbed a clipboard and hardhat from the wall. Now I looked like I belonged there, except for my sneakers.

I didn’t see Partridge anywhere, but there was just one door near enough to dodge into, and it was swinging closed. I headed there. Nobody paid me any attention because of my costume. I was a genius.

Of course everyone was acutely aware of my presence. They only pretended to be fooled by my disguise. I was such an idiot.

I passed through the door into a stairwell.

That’s when Partridge grabbed me. I gasped. In a split second he had me pinned with my chest up against the wall and my arm behind my back. He ripped off my hardhat and threw it away into the shadows.

“Truman!” He said in a gruff, furious voice. “You’re the one following me? Damn it, kid. What do you think you know?”

I had a few choices then. I could have shouted “I know you killed Teresa Gilbert!” but I didn’t know how he’d react. I could have claimed I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I doubted he’d buy that. My strongest instinct was to goof and agree, “You’re right, I am following you. Do you have a moment to discuss our good lord and savior, Godzilla?”

I chose silence.

Goof and agree was my strategy for relieving pressure. When you’re too quiet, people put pressure on you with questions and social obligations. But that’s just because they also feel the pressure of social obligations. Bertrand Partridge was feeling it right then, even in this antisocial interaction. And I needed him to keep feeling the pressure. I needed him to fill in the blank.

“You think you know about that bimbo with the messed up Ferrari?”

Silence. I thought about the tape recorder in my pocket. He spun me around and pinned both of my shoulders. Now face to face, I could feel the social pressure like hot breath on both of us.

“You think you know?!? I’ll tell you. I spent weeks fawning after her and what did I get? She was two timing me with that worm, Klotzman.”

I swallowed a knot in my throat. I fought myself to say nothing. No goofs. Certainly not “Looks like you’re the klotz, now.”

“You think I killed her? I don’t know the first thing about tampering with a clutch.”

That was close enough to a confession. I threw my arms up between us and thrust his arms outward. His face showed genuine surprise as he lost his leverage and I shoved him away. I should have stayed silent then, but I couldn’t resist anymore.

I said, “Ha! If you didn’t kill her, how did you know the clutch caused the crash? That wasn’t in the papers!”

“You stupid brat. I’ll--”

“Hold it right there, Partridge!” I turned to see Officer Groupon coming down the stairs with her famous M&P 2.0 trained on Partridge. As she crossed to stand by me, Partridge backed up to give her space.

“Did you hear him, Linda?” I asked.

“I heard every word, Truman.”

“You… wait, everything? So you could have come down at any moment and you just waited?” Sure I played Partridge okay, but I wouldn’t have minded some help from a cop.

“Not now, Truman. Partridge, put your hands behind your head. Nice and slow.”

Partridge started to comply, then he dashed up the stairs. He was quicker than I would have guessed. We both chased him, but I reached the roof long before Linda. There I stopped and stared wide eyed at Partridge and at the Gulf of Mexico stretching out behind him. A seagull squawked somewhere.

“I’ll never let that cop catch me alive, Truman. I never should have let it get this far…” Partridge was teetering on the edge of the roof. His tie danced in the breeze. I broke out in a cold sweat as I pictured the water hundreds of feet below him crashing against the rocks at the building’s foundation.

It was probably not hundreds of feet, but my imagination would not be bridled.

Partridge clenched his fists, and I thought he was getting ready for something difficult. I couldn’t think any faster than that when the world wouldn’t hold still.

“Hey, Truman. Say that thing for me.”

“W-what thing?”

“That thing you always say. ‘In case I don’t see ya…’”

“You mean, good afternoon, good even--” That’s when Bertrand Partridge jumped. The last thing I saw was his tie.

The wind blew and the sun shone. My hands shook like leaves.

Linda finally burst out of the roof access door. She looked around, her weapon pointed to the floor.

“What happened, Truman?”

“He… he jumped.”

Linda walked to the edge and peered over easily as if the ocean wasn’t searching for another body to consume. “Oh, he’s dead alright,” and she holstered her weapon.

I clutched at the door handle and bent over. I felt guilty not saying it. A man was dead. It was his last wish. Even a murderer gets a last wish. So I granted it... “And goodnight.”

***

During the weeks of pursuing the Ferrari Killer, all I could think about was returning to normalcy.

Normalcy was Seahaven Island Community College, the only higher education option I ever had.

They didn’t offer any major I was interested in. Only one course on economics. I didn’t really need to learn about supply and demand, but I took the easy A.

Anyway, majoring in Hospitality & Culinary Arts was more tolerable than crossing the bridge to another college.

It was more tolerable on any other day.

When the police were done taking my statement and I had handed over my tape recorder, I skipped Professor Paula Deen’s Pastry Concepts and Design class and just went home. I must have stared into space for an hour thinking about what it was like to be Bertrand Partridge as he plunged into the ocean. Or sometimes I imagined it was onto rocks. I hadn’t seen what happened to him.

That’s where my mind was when my mother came home.

“Truman, have you seen my Women’s League membership tag? I know I left it on the hutch. Well, you’ll never believe who called me at the office today.” Mom walked past me and through the kitchen. “Sheila Reynolds. She’s working for the mayor’s re-election campaign.” She was walking back to the hall. “It’s proud work, but I’m surprised she had the nerve to call me up. It must have been three years since I…” She stopped in the foyer sounding exasperated. “Truman, what are you doing? Are you even listening?” Then she looked away and started fixing her hair in the mirror.

“I saw a man jump to his death today, Mom.” I was lying on the couch, watching nothing on the ceiling, hugging a pillow.

“Yes, I heard about that. I never thought Bertrand Partridge was the type. Do you know, he used to park his Corvette on the beach and sit on the hood tanning and winking at all the women?” She kept walking and kept talking. “What a beastly man. The Corvette was nice though. Very sleek. I hear the new Corvette models give even more adrenaline. Oh, no,” she interrupted herself. “Truman, can I ask you to go down to the corner store? I’m supposed to bring ice cream to the meeting. Honestly, I don’t see why Mary Ann doesn’t do it. She’s the treasurer and she certainly has plenty of time.”

My mother waved a ten dollar bill above my face.

“Really?”

“Yes, Truman, please hurry or I’ll be late.”

“Ok, Mom.”

I took the bill and dragged myself off the couch. I stepped back out into the 73°F/22°C summer air. Mrs. Jenkins rode by on her bike. A car drove past at the end of the street. The driver was singing. No one else could feel Partridge’s death. The world might as well be a game to them.

I headed down the sidewalk watching my feet.

I waved at Mr. Kremeli as I entered Kraft Heinz Convenience Store and passed his counter. I came back carrying two quarts of vanilla and chocolate ice cream.

Mr. Kremeli smiled. A nice-day-come-again smile of politeness and properly functioning society. I broke on the inside. This was too much for me. People were dying in the world. People I knew. Nothing was properly functioning.

As Mr. Kremeli handed back my change, I got a bad idea. The world was broken anyway…

“Mr. Kremeli, this isn’t enough change. I gave you a twenty.”

Kremeli looked at me, frozen in a polite smile. A clock ticked. Refrigerators hummed. I almost walked out. I would go into hiding in shame for trying this trick. Then he said, “Of course, Truman. Here you go,” and he handed me the ten dollar bill I had just given him. “Don’t spend it all in one place.”

Guilt flashed through my mind. What had I done? Stolen from an old man who walks his dog past my house every day. A man who needs a cane whenever rain is on the way.

I smiled and said, “Thanks, Mr. Kremeli. And in case I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight!”

***

When I got home I smiled at Mom, handed her the ice cream, and went upstairs to change my clothes. Nothing fancy, the kind of thing I wore when I used to wait tables. I had a vague plan. When Mom left, I headed downtown. I was 21 and this broken world was mine.

I started looking for opportunities. There are dozens of opportunities we ignore every day when we’re just trying to get from here to there without a fuss.

I found myself in front of the American Eagle Movie Theater. They were playing _The Breakfast Club_ in their single auditorium. When no one was looking I checked the trash can outside for discarded ticket stubs. Someone’s stub for the matinee showing was there for the taking.

I had noticed a failure mode once. Ticket rippers never hassle people who just walk right by and flash a torn ticket. They just assume they left for something and came back.

But then I started to doubt myself. What if he stopped me just this once? Maybe I could try to mess the ticket up so the guy couldn’t see that it was for an earlier show. Maybe I could get it wet. No, how would I explain why it was wet?

Maybe this wouldn’t work. The ticket ripper was probably the same guy all night. He’d know he hadn’t seen me come in before. He’d know for sure.

No, I was thinking too hard about this. When ordinary people walk back into a theater they don’t come up with a story about a smudged ticket or explain themselves at all.

I was trembling and starting to believe I didn’t even want to see _The Breakfast Club_ again.

I looked around for something to calm my nerves, but I only saw the poster for the movie. Emilio Estevez, Molly Ringwald, and whoever played John Bender, the bad-boy character. What would John Bender do?

Try to look normal, Truman. Better than normal, be casual cool like John Bender. I took a deep breath, swung open the glass door, and walked straight past the ticket ripper.

He said, “Sir?”

Oh shit, I didn’t flash my ticket. What would John Bender do? I thrust the ticket stub into the air in the same motion he makes at the end of the film and just kept walking. _Do forget about me_ , I willed.

The movie had already started, so I fumbled in the dark for a seat among a few other patrons. I should have picked a busier night. Any second now that guy was gonna come find me.

After five minutes, nobody came to grab me and throw me bodily out the door. I had done it! I had pulled off another scam.

After a few minutes of watching teenagers yammer I noticed I was too pumped-up to sit and watch _The Breakfast Club_. So I used the back exit.

Alive with power, I stepped out into the alley. The twilight gave everything a surreal hue. I breathed deep and I was so far above it all, I didn’t even mind the thick smell of alleyway garbage bins.

Besides, I also smelled fresh lobster cooking.

I followed that smell and a cacophony of kitchen noises into an open door across the alley. It was a restaurant kitchen.

Nobody noticed me walk in, so I grabbed an apron off the wall and tucked in my Oxford shirt. I looked like any other waiter. I hadn’t planned on playing a server tonight, but I was ready; I could have done this at a department store or a grocery store. Service industry clothes are pretty universal.

I passed the lobster tank and peeked into the dining room. If the cook staff saw me they didn’t say anything.

I saw a hostess seating a couple in the middle of the dining room. I tried to think of what John Bender would do in this prank. No. I thought of what Bill Murray would do.

When the hostess walked away, I rolled up my sleeves to match the other servers and grabbed two desserts from the fridge.

I walked straight to the new diners and started improvising, “Good evening and welcome to... our establishment. It’s Sweet Monday, so let me offer you these two slices of chocolate cake, on the house.” I placed the two dishes in front of my customers when...

“Truman!” one of my new customers said.

I almost choked. What would Bill Murray do? Nothing came to mind. I looked closer at the speaker. An older woman. I’d seen her before, but I had no idea she knew my name.

“Uh… Yes, that’s my name. Have we met?”

She just stammered. Then her date broke in, “We know your mother.”

“Truman?” A new voice. I turned to see a waitress. I knew her. We had class together. She was holding a writing pad like a professional. Clearly she had prepared for this role. I was just trying to get back my inner Bill Murray.

“Truman, I didn’t know you worked here.”

“Hi, Jennifer. Uh, yeah, I’ve only had a few shifts so far,” I had the distinct sense that my eyes were either too much open or too much closed, but I didn’t know which.

“But… this is my table,” said Jennifer.

“Uh…” Confidence, Truman. That’s how this works. Goof and agree. Bill Murray is my goof. Now just agree!

“Yeah, the boss said this was your table.” Now follow through. “But he also said you needed help. You’ve been kind of slow lately.” Then I loudly whispered to the couple, “She’s had her eye on one of the guys in the kitchen.”

I smiled back at Jennifer. This was the hardest goof and agree I’d ever been through. And I hadn’t even finished the follow through. I said, “I’m gonna call the boss, we’ll get this all straightened out. Or better yet, you call him, I’ll get these good people’s drink orders.”

She glanced toward the phone at the greeting desk and said, “I… am sure that you’re right. I’ll call him just to see what he thinks I should do.”

While she headed that way I turned to my customers. “Enjoy Free Cake Monday. And hey, happy anniversary!” I took a shot in the dark. It felt very Murray-like to tell people when their own wedding date was.

“Oh, yes, forty years of bliss!” I heard the wife call as I was hurrying into the kitchen. Wow, was I right? But then I heard her husband shush her. Weird.

I had engineered an escape, but I was falling apart inside. I wasn’t a con-man. And I wasn’t Bill Murray. I was just Truman, too useless to leave a two mile island, too stupid to stop a man from jumping to his death. I didn’t even know what Bill Murray would do at this point.

I stopped short next to the lobster tank. And that’s when I knew what Bill Murray would do. So I reached in and chose a pet. I could be Murray a little longer. Murray felt good.

But once I had this wet bug dripping salt water all over the floor, I looked at the other two. And there was an empty busser bin sitting so close by. I put my new friend in it and added the other lobsters and we all hurried out the back door. The kitchen staff watched it all in shock.

As we headed down the alley, I heard Jennifer call into the kitchen, “Have you seen Truman?” I never heard their answer.

I was three for three. And if you’re winning too much, it means you aren’t taking enough risks.

So I started thinking of things that would be riskier. I pulled a valet scam and a guy gave me his Mercedes. I brought my lobsters along. I pulled the wrong change trick again to score free firecrackers. I threw firecrackers out the car window into yards. I scared a dog with them. I consoled the dog. I convinced Officer Carmichael that the guy throwing firecrackers went “that way”. I adopted the dog into my mobile menagerie. I barked at strangers. It was the dog’s idea. I learned that the physics of cow tipping doesn’t work. I never took five minutes to think up a great idea. I just pretended to be Steve Martin, Robert Redford, Eddie Murphy...

After a few more adventures that were even less noteworthy than they were clever, I still had not been stopped. My dog had run off, so I thought it was time to set my lobsters free too.

It wasn't until I turned the car east onto Gulf Boulevard that I realized what I was doing and felt the raw horror. I was driving beside the ocean. It had finally found me. As I drove east beside the beach, the moon's grotesque, misshapen reflection chased me over the angry, black waves. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. I was just Truman again. My clammy hands gripped the steering wheel tighter.

I had felt powerful. I'd bluffed my way all around town, but I couldn't bluff the Gulf of Mexico. Who could do such a thing? Nobody. Nobody could.

The memory of Bertrand Partridge’s tie mocked me.

Then I slammed into the airbag and everything went dark.

I didn't pass out. Everything really went dark. It must have been a low speed impact, but the collision had knocked the street lights out. In fact, the whole neighborhood had gone dark.

A half moment later, blue and red lights cut through the night.

My door opened and Officer Carmichael shone a flashlight into my face. He said, “Truman, can you walk? Let’s get you some place where we can all get a good look at you.”

Now I know what he really meant.

***

I had seen the holding cells at the jail before, but always from the outside of the bars. On this side, it was like someone had gone out of their way to make it disgusting and damp. Now the early morning sun was casting dusty beams shaped like the bars in the single window. I gave up trying to sleep on the blood-stained bench I’d been laying on all night.

I went to look out the window. I spotted a billboard across the street that read Re-elect Mayor Harrison Snyder 2019.

Thoughts flooded back to me of the lobsters and the dog and the car. Then the nice couple in the restaurant. That woman had agreed that it was her anniversary. Forty years, she said. How did I get that right?

It would be funny if she was just joking. Just goofing and agreeing and following through.

That’s when Officer Linda Groupon startled me.

“Truman, you are so dense.”

I whirled around. “Linda! I’m so glad you’re here.”

“That’s Officer Groupon to you. And you shouldn’t be glad. Do you know what you did out there? I don’t think Mr. Amazon-Prime will ever stop complaining about the smell.” I couldn’t remember what I’d done that would make a smell.

“I’m sorry, Linda. I’ll make it up to Mr. Amazon-Prime. And I’ll replant his whole hedge!”

“That is just like you, Truman. You think you can fix everything with a little light work on a weekend,” Linda said.

“You don’t get it,” I blurted out, but I didn’t know what came next.

“No, you don’t get it, Truman. Do you know what would happen to me in your shoes? You’re behind steel bars. I’d be in a steel drawer. You’re so full of your privilege!” And she threw her arms in the air and took a deep breath. I think I heard her counting.

“I…” I couldn’t understand. “Privilege? I’m not privileged. I’m middle class! Have you seen the houses on the beach?” All in all it wasn’t the right thing to say to the person holding the jail keys.

“The beach! Jesus Christ, Truman, you’re so privileged you don’t even know enough to recognize privilege.” That was almost familiar. A dim light shone on a half-remembered page in my brain. But I lost it when she kept pushing, “You can get away with anything around here!”

“I think I would know if I was privileged, Linda!”

“No, Truman. You have no idea how much power you hold.” Linda sat down hard in a folding chair, making it scrape noisily on the linoleum. “You can’t act like this, Truman. People look up to you. We want good things for you. You… no, you just can’t understand. There’s just nothing in your experience to help you understand your privilege.”

That’s when my thought came back to me. If she was talking about some experience I didn’t have, then I was supposed to treat this as a golden opportunity. I hoped it would be useful. I took a breath.

“Why can’t I understand?” It was supposed to be inquisitive, but it sounded defiant.

Linda had her elbows propped on her knees and her head hanging over. Now she lifted her face to really look at me.

“How can I explain it to you if you don’t even have a starting point, Truman?” She leaned back and crossed her arms. That was a bad signal. I needed her on my side if I was going to get out of here. I swallowed hard.

“I do. I have a starting point. Everyone has a starting point. I’m just trying to…” No, Truman, get her on your side. Agree and follow through. And no goof this time.

I took another deep breath. “You’re right I don’t have the experience. But I have some experience. I can understand this. I could. Please. Just give me the first step. I want to cover the inferential distance to where you are.”

“I can’t explain all the privilege you have, Truman--”

“I just need to go step by step!” I panicked.

“Don’t interrupt if you want me to explain this,” Linda said. So I bit my lip.

“I can’t explain all the privilege you have. I just can’t. But here’s where I’m coming from.

“I grew up in the ghetto. I did not have a positive opinion of police officers. I saw officers beating a black man on the news when I was six years old. It wasn’t just that time. It was just that time someone had a video camera. I knew how the world was going to be for me. That’s when I knew life would not get better. And that’s how it is now, in 2019.”

I opened my mouth. I was going to say Seahaven Island isn’t like that. It has lots of black people. And anyway, how can you call me privileged by using the ghetto as a baseline? But I had grasped onto something rational for once, and I wasn’t going to panic again and lose it. I needed to cross this inferential distance. I stood at the bars and listened.

She continued, “So I grew up in a world that works a certain way. Then I’m grown and I start to see what white people get away with. Truman, you don’t want to call it privilege, but what else can it be? The world has rules and these people can just break them. They plain surprise me with the way they get away with things. Surprise me. That’s what you always say, ‘That would surprise me.’ Well, you gotta know the things that surprise _me_.”

“Like the way I acted last night…” I interjected and I dropped my gaze. I didn’t need to believe everything she said. It was the way she saw it, and I could at least meet her there.

“You sure as hell surprised me last night. But what you’re gonna get away with… well, I’ve always known that you could get away with a lot. But that’s just your own privilege. It’s more than white privilege.”

“More? Why?” Easy there, Truman. I took a deep breath. “I mean, thank you. Thank you for sharing your experience with me. It’s… I get it now.”

“No! No, you don’t get it, Truman. I told you all of that so you could understand why you don’t understand anything.

“Listen, I had to think for a long time when someone said I ought to take a role on… ought to become a police officer and go work in a little town in Florida. I hated cops. But I thought maybe this was my chance. Maybe this was the best thing I could do. To set an example here.

“You could do anything, Truman. You could…” She looked around and her eyes landed on the billboard outside my window. “You could be the dang mayor if you wanted.”

“But how can that possibly be true? I’m in jail!” is what I was going to say, but just then my mother burst in the door.

“That’s enough, Officer. I believe the chief was calling for you.” Mom was walking with an air of superiority. She had a blue clutch that matched her Sunday Best dress. She looked too important for this jail.

“Hello, Mrs. Burbank. I’ll head straight to the chief’s office,” Linda said. Then she turned to me, “Truman, I hope I see you again.” She sighed. Then she hugged me through the bars and walked out the doors toward the main offices of the police station.

I called after her, "What do you mean?" I asked my mom, “What was that about? What did she mean?”

“What, no hello for your mother? Truman, you look filthy. Well, no wonder after your little escapade. Is this really who you want to be, Truman? A ten-cent hoodlum with a library addiction?” One look in her eyes and I felt like gum on a shoe.

“I’m sorry, Mom. I don’t know what to do now.” I sat on the blood-stained bench, deflated.

“I’ll tell you what you’re going to do. You’re going to replant Mr. Amazon-Prime’s hedge.”

I looked up at her. “What?”

“And you’re going to take Mrs. Macy’s dog Corky to obedience classes until he recovers his nerves. And you’ll work odd jobs for Mr. Toshiba, the man you stole the car from. You have at least three busy weeks in front of you. On top of your studies.”

My mouth hung open. “That’s it? But Linda said--”

“Oh, I don’t think we’ll need to worry about Officer Groupon. We know the judge and a very good lawyer. I’m sure they’ll see that you were just under a lot of stress. Officer Groupon doesn’t have any say here. Besides, I don’t think she’ll be an officer for long.”

“She WHAT?!?” I jumped up to grab the bars.

“Truman, after the way she was in here berating you, I’m surprised you care.” My mother had taken out a compact mirror when she mentioned the judge and was now applying fresh lipstick for the show she planned to put on.

“She’s the best cop in this lousy town. They can’t fire her! What about… what about seniority? She’s been here for twelve years,” I said. I couldn’t let Linda get fired. She meant too much to the town. And to me. She had come in here to tough-love me into shape.

And she was here for a reason. This was her calling.

“Truman, she’s been dragging you along on murder cases, putting you in danger. You were attacked by Bertrand Partridge! It’s too much. Look at what it’s driven you to do.” Her jewelry clinked together as she gestured toward me.

So that’s what it was. They were going to pin it all on Linda. She had come to work hard and set a good example and now she would be dismissed in disgrace back to wherever she came from in California.

“Besides, if you want to talk about seniority, who has more seniority than the mayor? It was his idea. You can’t fight this, Truman.”

The mayor. I looked out the window at the stupid grin on the billboard. Re-elect Mayor Harrison Snyder 2019.

Mom thought I could get off the hook easy. Was I really as privileged as Linda thought? It didn’t feel true. But it sounded like Mom believed it, too.

You can't spend your summers working as a waiter and come away with privilege. I had nothing. I usually felt powerless. But Linda knew things I lacked the experience to see. I let a vague hypothesis into my orbit. _I Am Privileged_.

If it was true, I should anticipate that Mom's lawyer would get me off the hook.

I looked out at the billboard again.

“No, you’re wrong, Mom. And Linda’s right. I _can_ fight this.”

God, I hoped Linda was right. Because that was the only way I could save her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> François Clemmons, who played Officer Clemmons on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, first said the words, “I grew up in the ghetto. I did not have a positive opinion of police officers.” It took a lot for him to agree to join Fred Rogers on his show, and the move is now considered ground-breaking. An event often cited as a big step forward in television was when he and Fred put their feet in a kiddie pool together on a hot day without any fuss, in a time when segregated pools were still the norm in much of the United States. Besides that he’s a very impressive person, and I’m glad to have his story as inspiration for Linda Groupon.


End file.
